Morgan Wallen’s Denver piano flip wasn’t a meltdown — his creative director sets record straight

Remember when Morgan Wallen flipped a piano at Empower Field back in May and the internet collectively lost its mind? Turns out, it wasn’t the meltdown everyone thought it was. Wallen’s creative director, Justin Clough, is finally setting the record straight, and Denver was at the center of what became one of the most viral moments of the entire Still the Problem Tour.

Here’s what happened: During night one of Wallen’s back-to-back Denver shows on May 29, the country superstar sat down at the piano for “Sand in My Boots,” one of the most intimate, stripped-back moments of the set, and couldn’t hear the instrument through his in-ear monitors. He tried to play through it, but if you can’t hear what you’re playing in a 76,000-seat stadium, it’s basically impossible. So Wallen stood up, told the Empower Field crowd “Just sing it a cappella, this piano ain’t working,” and finished the song unaccompanied, which the Denver crowd absolutely ate up. Then he walked back to the piano and flipped it. The videos went everywhere.

But according to Clough, who was backstage when it happened and spoke about it on the “In The Trenches with Spidey Smith” podcast, Wallen wasn’t having a tantrum, he was actually trying to push the piano back onto the stage lift so it could be lowered and fixed. “He wasn’t upset about it,” Clough said. The people underneath the stage, however, didn’t know that, they just heard a piano crash and assumed the worst. Wallen himself came off stage laughing, and he’s joked about the whole thing multiple times since, both on social media and during later shows. HARDY even texted him the next day: “Hey, man. My mom needs a piano moved tomorrow. Just wondering if you could come help?”

So there you have it. Denver didn’t witness a rockstar meltdown, Denver witnessed a guy trying to fix a broken piano in real time, giving up, singing one of his biggest hits without any instruments and then becoming a meme. The night also featured John Elway as the celebrity walkout, but the internet didn’t seem to think that was as cool.